Digging up opportunities

Underneath the Fowler Museum of Cultural History, the Cotsen
Institute of Archaeology spreads out like a catacomb, and though
UCLA has no undergraduate major in archaeology, some UCLA
undergraduates work regularly in the museum’s basement.

Nearly every afternoon, Tria Marie Ellison and Jerry Howard work
in Professor Tom Wake’s zoo archaeology lab. The third-year
anthropology students spend their afternoons sifting through small
piles of bones recovered from a 3,500-year-old bell-shaped trash
pit at Tlaxcala, Mexico. They identify and catalogue the remains of
small animals and make notes about the positions in which the
animals were discovered to get an idea of what the ecology of the
area was like when these animals fell into the pit, several
centuries before the common era.

Wake said archaeologists normally consider this kind of analysis
the “drudge work” of the field. But Ellison and Howard
want to be archaeologists, and they are excited to be working in a
real lab.

“It’s a great opportunity to be involved with actual
research done by a professor, and you get guidance at the same
time,” Ellison said.

“Plus, I just like to work with bones,” she
added.

Wake said having undergraduates work in his lab allows him to
focus on the parts of his research that only he can do, and it
gives them practical experience in archeology and the opportunity
to contribute to published works. When Ellison and Howard complete
their project in the lab, for example, they will write it up and
likely become co-authors of a textbook chapter.

They also get to see what archaeological research is really
like.

“This is what it is really like in the lab portions (of
archeology),” Howard said. “For every hour in the
field, you are going to spend eight to 10 hours in the
lab.”

Most American archaeologists receive their undergraduate
education in anthropology, and undergraduate archaeology
departments are extremely rare. UCLA offers such classes through
the anthropology, Near Eastern studies, art history and classics
departments, but the lack of an archaeology department means that
interested students have to seek out opportunities on their
own.

But at UCLA, a wide range of opportunities do exist for
motivated students who, like Howard and Ellison, choose to dig for
them.

Both were already interested in archaeology when they came to
UCLA.

“I have always been interested in bones,” Howard
said.

This interest first led him to become an X-ray technician. Five
years later, he scaled back his involvement in the medical field
and went into real estate. But before long, he became intrigued by
the archaeologists who came to survey properties. And two years
later, with his passion for archaeology stoked by his 10-year-old
son Devon’s common interest in the subject, he decided to go
back to school.

Ellison’s interest in archaeology stems from her childhood
in rural Illinois. As a young girl, she occupied herself by digging
in the backyard with her younger brother. They sometimes found
arrowheads left over from the Native Americans who had inhabited
the land, and she said sometimes her mother would bring the
arrowheads to the local museum.

Ellison and Howard began working in Wake’s lab after
taking his class on archaeological lab methods this winter, and
this summer they will be among six UCLA undergraduates to accompany
him to a field school in a tropical rainforest at a site called
Bocas del Drago, on Isla Colón, off the coast of Panama, for
one month.

At the field school, run by the non-profit Institute for
Tropical Ecology and Conservation, Wake’s students will do an
excavation of a local prehistoric site in addition to listening to
lectures and reading. There are no prerequisites for going to the
field school, though ITEC recommends an introduction to
archaeology, and UCLA students can also earn up to 12 units of
credit for attending.

Wake, who will be taking students to Panama for his third time
this summer, characterized the site as a “tropical
paradise.”

He described the field school as an immersion program in
archaeology, in which students will walk through the jungle at
night to find frogs and catch bats. And he said they will have
opportunities to sample other field programs, such as coral reef
ecology (diving) and canopy access (tree-climbing).

“It is the kind of experience that I would have absolutely
adored when I was an undergrad, and it is a fairly unique
opportunity,” Wake said. He added that while research at the
field school is intense, so is the “relaxation
potential,” because in addition to the proximity of sandy
beaches, the group goes into the town of Boca del Toro one night a
week for dancing, good meals and Internet.

UCLA has similar field schools in highland Ecuador, Chile, Peru
and Turkey. Julia Sanchez, assistant director of the Cotsen
Institute, said field schools are a great way for students to get
experience in archaeology and decide if they are interested enough
to continue in the discipline.

Howard and Ellison’s undergraduate forays into the world
of archaeology will not end when they complete the field school in
Panama.

This December, Ellison will work on a project in Uganda under
the direction of Merrick Posnansky, a UCLA Emeritus Professor of
anthropology and history.

Ellison is currently preparing for the excavation by collecting
ethnographic and historical materials from previous journeys into
the area. When she gets to Uganda in December, she will study how
craft traditions of Ugandans changed through contact with the
Nubians.

And in July, Howard will be one of four UCLA undergraduates who
will accompany Ilana Johnson, a doctoral student in anthropology,
to Peru to study a 2,000-year-old Moche civilization in
Pampagrande.

The project in Pampagrande, which is part of Johnson’s
dissertation, is also set up as a field school. The UCLA
undergraduates will join Johnson, professors and students from the
Catholic University in Lima in excavating one of the earliest urban
sites in Peru. Students earn credit and receive field and
laboratory training in addition to their time at the dig.

Johnson said undergraduate students are a great help, and many
professors run their projects as field schools.

“Students are a great source of volunteer help for
professors and (graduate) students,” Johnson said.
“They are enthusiastic, they’re able-bodied,
they’re willing to come down.”

She said undergraduates are important to archaeological research
because, since archaeologists have to compete for funding, having
undergraduate help makes it possible to work longer and do more
excavation.

She said her decision to bring undergraduates with her to Peru
was also motivated by her desire to get them interested in
archaeology, since attending a field school helped her decide to do
archaeological research.

Today, the Cotsen Institute offers the UCLA community an
introduction to archaeology that is closer to home. The institute
will hold an open house from 4 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. today, with open
laboratories and displays of recent findings. At 7:30 p.m., Julia
Sanchez, assistant director of the institute, will give a lecture
about music in the ancient world.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *